this post was submitted on 11 May 2024

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She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/news

102 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light by someone who had zoomed in on Madi’s face – but it was damning. Madi was a cheerleader with the Victory Vipers, a highly competitive “all-star” squad based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Vipers had a strict code of conduct; being caught partying and vaping could have got her thrown out of the team. And in July 2020, an anonymous person sent the incriminating video directly to Madi’s coaches.

Eight months later, that footage was the subject of a police news conference. “The police reviewed the video and other photographic images and found them to be what we now know to be called deepfakes,” district attorney Matt Weintraub told the assembled journalists at the Bucks County courthouse on 15 March 2021. Someone was deploying cutting-edge technology to tarnish a teenage cheerleader’s reputation.

But a little over a year later, when Spone finally appeared in court to face the charges against her, she was told the cyberharassment element of the case had been dropped. The police were no longer alleging that she had digitally manipulated anything. Someone had been crying deepfake. A story that generated thousands of headlines around the world was based on teenage lies, after all. When the truth finally came out, it was barely reported – but the videos and images were real.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Either a woman with no background in digital technology had made a sophisticated deepfake on her iPhone 8, or a 16-year-old had panicked and lied to her mother about vaping, or mother and daughter had decided together to explain away behaviour they knew would get Madi in trouble, with an elaborate story about digital manipulation. The police chose to believe the first explanation.

“They never understood deepfakes, and the implications of giving a press conference scaring people into thinking someone could take an image and turn it into something else so easily,” Birch says. “I don’t think they ever thought this thing would spread like wildfire and become a worldwide phenomenon.”

A small police force made a mistake that became too big to fix. “Once it blew up, the police couldn’t extricate themselves without losing face.”

As always, ACAB.

edit to add

And then there was this ...

These would be the last public comments (Officer Matthew) Reiss made about the case. On 26 May 2021 he was arrested on suspicion of possessing images of child sexual abuse. Two images had been uploaded to his Gmail account, and detectives had traced them to his IP address. When they raided his home and seized his electronic devices, they found more than 1,700 images and videos depicting children, including 84 of toddlers and infants. Reiss pleaded guilty in March 2022, and was later sentenced to 11 and a half to 23 months in jail. To use Weintraub’s language, if anyone was “preying on juveniles”, it was the police officer who led the investigation.

[–] StitchIsABitch 49 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Only 1-2 years for possessing literally hundreds of CP images and videos? What the fuck? I mean I guess he didn't harm anyone directly (as far as we know) but still, come on.

[–] gastationsushi 19 points 1 month ago

I could of sworn I've seen other CSM PDF files getting over a decade in jail. Pays off to be a criminal cop.

[–] MegaUltraChicken 10 points 1 month ago

Nah that's a pretty light sentence, he definitely got some leniency because he's fuzz.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

With that number of images he very likely paid for some and thereby directly contributed to abuse of children.

[–] disguy_ovahea 5 points 1 month ago

I wonder how much money the Hime family has donated to the Doylestown Police Department.